THE PARTS OF OURSELVES WE’RE DENYING

Christianity runs deep. It’s not for those who prefer to smile and go about their day suffering in silence. Jesus didn’t tell us to pick up our cross and hide behind it, but to pick it up and follow Him (Matthew 16:24). After all, Christianity isn’t a religion of stoicism sown behind routine, but a walk of faith aimed towards eternity planted into our heart by God (Ecclesiastes 3:11). On multiple occasions, the above Bible verse (Matthew 16:24) has forced me to pause and consider what Jesus was implying was happening while we follow Him with our cross in hand (metaphorically). What has come to me is that while we follow Jesus, what we have in our hands are the very parts of ourselves we are denying. Each of us may have a different type of battle with varying levels of intensity, but the common thread is that each of us must be prepared for battle, since it is the very thing we cannot avoid by trusting in Jesus’ command.

THE DEEPEST CUT INTO OUR SOUL

It’s a challenge to be a repentant soul aimed at exemplifying Jesus. In order to pick up our cross, we have to be willing and intentional about repentance. Remember, repentance isn’t just an apology, it’s a heart change; it’s the deepest cut into our soul acknowledging our sin to a holy, perfect, eternal God. Repentance is born from placing faith in Jesus’ atonement for our sins; a faith which is central to empowering what holds up the decision to pick up our cross in the first place. Following Jesus is a decision that requires us to dig deep into the recesses of our character in order to understand the beliefs we’ve adhered to, the reasons why we’ve devoted ourselves to those beliefs, and then commit ourselves to sacrificing foundation-less beliefs in order to carry a cross that declares victory in Christ and death to our old self (Ephesians 4:22-24).

NEW PRIORITIES & NEW HABITS

We have to re-learn through obedience to the Holy Spirit how to sacrifice our preference to live our own way before we are able to ensure our new habits become solidified by spiritual disciplines. Prayer, for example, may not have ever been important to us before, but now it’s critical. Gleaning from the Bible was a second thought tossed into the back of our mind, but now it’s a top priority. This is what it takes to look more like Jesus as less like the world, which is what we’re aiming for by carrying a cross we would never otherwise have considered picking up. It’s really important to take to heart that we have to want to want to live God’s way, since just about none of us actually want it on our own accord. The truth is, God’s grace is what has revealed in our hearts that it’s sinful to not want, and to not live out God’s way.

A NECESSARY THORN IN OUR SIDE

Psalm 55:22 tells us to cast our burdens onto the Lord. So what does it mean then to pick up our cross? It means having the spiritual maturity to understand that we must own up to our sin (acknowledge it before God) and deny ourselves the right to choose it in spite of our freedom to do otherwise. Thereby we suffer by exposing our worldly desires in the light of God’s righteousness in Christ. In other words, we suffer when we tell ourselves no. But that is a part of carrying our cross; the burden of denying our fleshly desires becomes a ‘thorn’ in our side where God’s grace is sufficient to allow us to learn to say yes to His commands despite having the freedom to say yes to sin.

FREEDOM FROM BONDAGE

On the other hand, we toss our suffering onto the strength of the Lord, who carries the weight while allowing us to struggle towards the benefits of growth in perseverance, maturity in the spirit, endurance in our spiritual discipline, and increased trust in Jesus’ power and might which carries us through our temptations and into the peace of freedom from bondage. If we don’t carry our cross and cling to Jesus, we won’t make it to God (John 14:6). But as long as we wear our spiritual armor, fight with the sword of the Spirit and surrender to Christ throughout the duration of our life-long battle, the war has already been won.

ALL ABOUT RELATIONSHIP

To understand more fully the depth of denying ourselves and picking up our cross, we must also understand living by faith isn’t about how hard we try, but about how obedient we are to God’s will being manifest through our faith, and how strongly we desire for His character to be embodied through us; that His Kingdom would show itself through the manner in which we think, speak, and live. Remember, it is impossible to please God without faith (Hebrews 11:6). Christianity is all about relationship, and faith is trusting God out of the foundational strength of our relationship to Him. Bottom line: There is no genuine way to pick up our cross without faith in what God will do through us when we choose Him over ourselves.

SACRIFICING THE SELF TO PLEASE GOD

The Apostle Paul says faith without works is dead (James 2:14-26), which points not to the accomplishments of one’s life, but to the sacrifices one makes in order to please God. In Matthew 26:41, Jesus tells us “the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” This clarifies the reality that our flesh has conflicting desires with the spirit, and that carrying out God’s will in spite of our fleshly desires is at the very core of what it means to deny ourselves and aim to please God instead.

WORKS OF FAITH GLORIFY GOD

Anything we do in spite of ourselves for the purpose of giving glory to God are the “works” of faith. Concordantly, anything we do in alignment with the Holy Spirit leads to God’s glory, and is therefore a work of faith.

Our works of faith aren’t about trophies we’ve won or how many organizations we’ve donated to, or even how many times we’ve shown up to church to volunteer—our works of faith are about peeling back the attention from ourselves and letting the Holy Spirit shine through the power of our faith through the way we live; how we serve others, and how we love God by doing those very things we are convicted to do in Christ.

A CHRIST-LIKE TIDAL WAVE

Being in relationship to God is the core reason we even pick up our cross in the first place. We wouldn’t carry a cross for a God we weren’t trying to please, would we? Denying ourselves would be spiritually impractical without an omniscient God whose wisdom could replace our dead worldly knowledge and fill us up with abundant Holy Spirit-led truth designed to change our entire lives and cause us to be a Christ-like tidal wave in our community. Think about that for a moment.

LOST THE ABILITY TO TRUST

If we were required to do all the work ourselves, there would be no more of a relationship to God than there would be if we didn’t believe God could do what we needed Him to do despite Him being the only God who’s able! It’s foolish to doubt Him, but once we’re fear-stricken over being wrong about how powerful we think we are without Him, we lose the ability to trust Him on our own. We’re scared of what the implications mean and we don’t want to face the reality that we need Him. But we do—we need God’s grace to help us to trust Him because without His help, we can’t discern Truth from deception if it’s staring us in the face. When we deny ourselves, however, the only Truth left is His.

DENYING OUR DENIAL

We’ve projected fear of our mortality onto the immortal, spaceless and timeless God who cannot do anything but love, manifest truth, show justice, and pave the way back to Himself (which He does in Christ). But make no mistake: God can do anything, and yet our trust in Him is weak because we hang onto our sin, denounce the idea of sin (because we can’t handle the idea of just how evil we might be without God), and then we distance ourselves from believing in God in order to hide as far from the reality we’ve created through our fears as we can.

Essentially, we’re denying our cross and denying the denial, hoping we don’t have to deal with the consequences of realizing our weakness is our lack of faith (lack of trust in God), and our sin is rebelling despite that knowledge. What’s most disheartening of all is we miss entirely what it means that God is merciful, gracious, omnibenevolent, and so patient before He is angry, jealous, and wrathful. Our fears (demonic deceptions) are stopping us even while God’s love in Christ is available to help us overcome fear.

OUR NEED FOR GOD IS INNATE

Picking up our cross doesn’t happen without repentance, and repentance is impossible if we can’t (or won’t) see how much is wrong with the way we think, speak, and live. If we can’t see the flaws in our human nature, we’re either not paying attention, or we’ve grown so numb to morality that we no longer judge according to objective truth, we merely react from a numb, closed heart. Repentance is a heart posture where we’ve examined our nature apart from God’s standard and truth, and we realize our need for Him is innate; that we’ve fallen short and weren’t designed not to need Him. In other words, to acknowledge our need for God is to recognize a basic truth of our spiritual origin.

REPENTANCE LEADS TO A COMPLETE DO-OVER

There is no denying ourselves and picking up our cross if we don’t even see anything wrong with the way we live, nor can we deny ourselves without recognizing the reason why our lifestyles are wrong is because there’s a God who created a standard to compare our sinful choices to. Living out repentance looks like our heart being changed so our whole lives change; not just our Sunday mornings, but every situational, relational, emotional, spiritual, financial, and physical aspect of our lives. It all needs a complete do-over because every part of us is accustomed to living in this world, thinking like this world; feeling from this world, reacting to this world, pursuing something within this world, believing only things about this world, and having nothing to do with the Kingdom of God beyond this world. 

INFLUENCES ON OURSELVES AND OTHERS

Until we reflect on the influences of the ways of the world on our character, morals, and beliefs, we won’t take seriously the repercussions of rejecting the righteousness of God. Furthermore, until we learn from the effects of living a less-than godly life and grasp the reality of the hell that it is to hedonistically distance ourselves from God with sin, we won’t realize the consequences our behaviors have had; not only in our own immediate life, but in the lives of everyone we’ve interacted with. If we don’t care about how our lives impact others, we clearly aren’t living for the Kingdom of God, and it’s apparent that our cross is still on the ground.

PART 2 ARRIVES THURSDAY 5/16… BE ON THE LOOKOUT!

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